Abridged History of the 10th Age

Gadrada

Dedicated almost entirely to the Necropolitan Temple, Gadrada is in fact little more than the massive outbuildings that serve the huge center of Akemite worship in the north. The “city” is an enormous complex of temples and memorial tombs for those who adhere to the cremation rituals and hundreds of thousands of crypts and burial plots for the Akemite faithful and the unburned. It is a dry desert place, but the Akemites have watered the yards of the dead for a hundred years with miles of aqueduct and pipeline, transforming it to a green place in the wastes.

Gadrada is also a solemn place, and few visit it with any intention other than to inter the dead or to join the priesthood. It is rumored that Gadrada is closer to the land of the dead than any of the other places in the world. The main gates of the Necropolitan Temple (which sits at the highest point nearest the center of the maze of tombs) are designed to mimic the First Gate of Death as written in the holy scriptures of Akem, the Books of the Dead. The temple itself is low and has no windows; in appearance it bears great similarity to Khewed or Ishtrian temples to Akem, closed and secret.